Why do I feel stressed and what can I do about it?
In this modern world we live in, life can get very stressful. Our jobs, family life, relationships can all add to our levels of stress. For eg pressures at work, problems with your health, relationship breakdowns or worries about money can all cause you to become stressed.
So what is stress?
Stress has been with us since our caveman days and back then it was what enabled us to stay alive and thrive as a species. So actually stress is not necessarily a bad thing. Stress would have alerted the caveman to a potential threat such as a wild animal. This would then activate the release of stress hormones and adrenaline which would have flooded the caveman with energy to either fight the animal or run away. What we now call our fight/flight response.
And stress can still help us in certain situations such as if a child runs out on the road and we immediately slam on the brakes to stop the car. However if we find ourselves in a constant state of alert and suffering from chronic stress, this is when we need to put strategies in place to help us manage our stress levels.
How can stress affect us?
Stress can affect how we think, how we feel, how we behave and it can affect us all differently. Sometimes it can feel like you are completely overwhelmed and panicked by every single thing and other times you might not even realised you’re stressed. When we are stressed it can manifest in a variety of ways –
Sleeping too little or too much
Fast heartbeat
Overeating
Drinking too much or smoking too much
Shaking, chills or hot flushes
Butterflies in your stomach
Lack of concentration
Increased anger
Shallow breathing or hyperventilating
High blood pressure
Dizziness
Tendency to suffer from aches, pains and headaches
Constipation or diahorrea
Indigestion or heartburn
Indeciveness and poor judgement
So what can we do and how can we manage stress?
The first thing to note is that not all stress is bad. As mentioned previously it has enabled us to survive as a species and as such a certain level of stress is good for us and helps us to motivate us. It helps us to get up in the morning and get on with our day. It helps us to meet a deadline, to take exams, to complete tasks.
But when we are in a state of ‘chronic’ stress; when our body never gets the chance to recover from its state of high alert, then we need to take action to manage it in order to live a healthy and fulfilled life.
Here are some tips that I want to share with you to help you manage your stress levels.
1. Be aware of your breath
Breathing is the most natural thing in the world and yet sometimes we find ourselves breathing in a way that is not helpful to us or our health. When we feel fear, when we feel panic, when we feel stressed we tend to breathe from our chest in short, shallow breaths. This is how our breathing works when our stress response has been activated. Our heart beats faster, blood pumps round our bodies quicker and is directed away from the organs of the body to the arms and legs getting us ready for the fight or the flight.
This response is perfect in a real emergency but not so good for living every day. If we are not in mortal danger and we don’t need to run or to fight then we need to switch off this shallow breathing. The way we do that is by breathing deeply, rhythmically and regularly. This deep belly breathing calms our brain, tells it we are safe and that this is not an emergency and switches off the stress response. One of my favourite ways of doing this is using the Rectangular breathing technique. If you would like further information on this technique then please click here to join my free Facebook group A Calmer Mind, A Happier You.
2. Move your body
There is lots of research on the benefits of movement and exercise and how this can reduce our stress levels. When we exercise we use up that excess cortisol and adrenaline that is being produced by the body when it perceives that we are in danger and being threatened (our fight/flight mode). And exercise doesn’t mean that we have to go the gym and pump iron. It can be gentle exercise such as walking or gardening or swimming. As long as we increase our heart rate from doing it, then it’s beneficial to us.
3. Get a good night’s sleep
I can’t tell you how important sleep is for our general wellbeing and health. As adults we need around 7 – 8 hours of good quality sleep a night. Sleep is where we process the emotions of the day and where we consolidate our learnings. When we are stressed usually our sleep pattern is disrupted and this adds to our feeling of overwhelm and inability to cope. As sleep is where we process our emotions, you can see the link to feeling more stressed if we don’t get a good night’s sleep. So plan for sleep and put it in your diary. If you struggle with sleep then listening to a relaxation or meditation can help enormously. In my Facebook group A Calmer Mind, A Happier You I go live every 2 weeks to deliver a free relaxation session so if would like to get a better night’s sleep then click here to join me.
4. Watch how you speak to yourself
Your thoughts really do matter and you are always listening. So if you tell yourself you are worthless, stupid, useless then guess what? That’s exactly how you will be. So change those words to words of kindness and compassion. If you find this hard to do, then imagine you are speaking to a 4 year old child. You would never tell a 4 year old child they are useless and stupid so don’t say it to yourself. Show yourself some love and compassion and only use words that you would say to your 4 year old self. Reminding yourself you are making progress, telling yourself you are doing the best that you can, saying to yourself that you can do the things you want to and celebrating each little success. Try it and see what happens.
5. Make time for you
Making time for you is so important for our wellbeing and in managing our stress levels. It could be taking time to have a bath or read a book or listen to a podcast or your favourite music. As long as it’s something that is just for you, something that you love to do and makes you feel good. It doesn’t even have to take a long time. Simply taking 5 minutes to enjoy a cuppa in the garden by yourself is enough to recharge your batteries.
6. Focus on the good things
I know this can be hard but trust me, when you start to practise it daily it just gets easier and easier. In my therapy room I talk a lot with my clients about what has been good that week. At the beginning of our journey together they find this quite difficult but as the sessions progress it is so lovely to listen to all the positive things they are noticing in their life. And of course when we notice the good things, however small, we release those wonderful positive neurotransmitters that make us feel so good and keep us in intellectual control.
A good way to start this process is to think of 3 good things at the end of each day. They don’t have to be big things either, just things that make you smile, made you feel good. It might be an unexpected hug from one of the children, it might be that someone let you out from a busy junction. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that you recall it and reflect on why it made you feel good.
If you are proactive and put these tips into action then you should notice a difference in your stress levels. There will always be stormy seas in the ocean of our life so it’s important that we can navigate our way through them and be in control when the seas are rough and the waves are high.
Sometimes all we need is to invest a little time in changing our mindset so that stress has less of an opportunity to take control. Hypnotherapy can be very effective in reducing stress levels and helping you live a happier life.